The Flop House - Ep. #300 - The Wicker Man
Episode Date: December 21, 2019Well, we made it to three hundred, guys. And it only took us 12 years. What a triumph of the human spirit. Or monument to three lives sorely misused. One of those two things. But hey! It's Cagemas, wh...en we celebrate the work of Saint Nicolas Cage! And Hallie's here! And we're talking about The Wicker Man! That's a 300th birthday to be proud of Meanwhile Elliott and Stu really love pronouncing "raspberries," Dan wonders how long you can hold bullets, and Hallie isn't gonna let motherhood tank her Flop House Q rating. Wikipedia synopsis of The Wicker Man No recommendations in this episode, just some Flop House nostalgia.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
On this, the 300th episode of the Flop House, a special cage-mas show, The Wicker Man!
And I'm Dan McCoy. Oh boy Dan it's me Stuart Wellington.
And for the 300th time not really I missed a bunch of episodes it's me Elliott Kalen.
And me, Halle Hagler. Also so Dan you're continuing the tradition of not introducing our
guest. She's been here so many times. She knows what's up.
Yeah, it's how.
Hi.
Howdy.
Why haven't you been here for a while?
Tell us all.
Well, you know, because you didn't invite me.
Well, I think you're pretty busy because you're doing
some major things in your life.
Yeah, we've been using a different discord channel or, uh, or what do people
use?
Slack, Slack, we moved to a different Slack channel.
Uh, so for those of you who are just joining us for the first time, who had decided that
the 300th episode of the show is the ideal entry point.
Hallie Hagglin is by far the most most popular most requested guest on the program
Long time friend she and I shared an office for many years pitched a TV show nobody was interested in
But I still think was really good. I think it's great. It's still out. It's still if and if they're any takers
And
And like a like a like a pawnbroker type thing. And uh, Emmy and WGA award winner winning writer, right?
An executive producer of Problem Areas with Whites and Act Boy.
You've done so much, Halle. You're very accomplished.
Thank you. I also, a mother.
But my number one title is mother.
That's the toughest job you'll ever love, right?
Exactly.
Tell us all about how your life has changed Sally I had a baby a
Couple months ago four months ago
But yeah, so I just really been doing that it's hard to get out of the house
You know, I'm scared mostly to leave the house. Oh
Gore phobic now. Yeah, well, you know at Hallie
I'm you have the thing that all early parents have where if you don't keep your eyes on the baby
at all times, then it's heart and lungs will stop instantly.
Yeah, well, actually, I'm just for a thread
that people are gonna get really mad
that my baby's crying in public.
It's mostly that fear.
Oh, yeah, there's that too.
Where's the fear of David Bowie,
the Goblin King stealing your baby on your list?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, that's, I mean, he's dead.
Oh, that's true.
Sorry, spoiler.
No, we're babies, the one by David Bowie.
You know, I feel like Jennifer Connelly's character
really overreacts, because I mean,
she doesn't have to babysit him for a while, right?
He's just doing all the hard work, huh?
Yeah.
I mean, are you blue as Goblin?
Just bring him back before Mom and Dad get home, right? Yeah, I mean, I
feel like that was kind of a loose
agreement when he left after he was
done spinning that ball around his
hands and turning the snake.
Worst case scenario that baby picks
up some amazing globe juggling
skills. Yeah, which I'd be
incredibly happy to have. Although I
will say I was once in a park in
London, England, and I saw this guy
trying to impress some pretty girls with a by juggling a glass globe like in a labyrinth. And I
was like, that is so impressive that you can do that. And at the same time, it is so dorky and
unimpressive. Let me say, I got a no man half won my heart with a juggling. Okay.
Hey guys, it's the 300th episode.
We said it in the intro, but it bears repeating.
What do we do on this podcast?
Well, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.
And by cosmic conjunction, our 300th episode falls on our annual holiday of cajemas where
we celebrate the work of St. Nicholas cage
Mm-hmm. Is there any greater proof of a god than that these two things lined up? I don't need one
Yeah, I mean it's certainly a spigot that keeps pouring out delicious treats for us to
The bigot that towards out treats
Snicklass cage your saying
Because that I mean that that's big it would get clogged up pretty fast, right?
Yeah.
I was watching this movie actually at a bar on my phone because I had a holiday party to
go to last night, and I needed to like-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be-
Dan's word to be- Dan's word to be- Dan's word to be- Dan's word to be- Dan's word to be- Dan's word to be- Dan's word to be- Like is he's like I'm both gonna not enjoy this party and also no no no no no I said before the party I just killed some time before the party I
It was the only time I could work in watching our movie of this week, which is the wicker in a man
Wicker man as we announced no the wicker in man
That's probably what it sounded like on your phone at the bar
but to the point of Nicholas Cage
Churning out movies the bartenders like hey, what are you watching there?
And I kind of awkwardly had to explain why I was watching
an old bad Nicholas Cage movie.
You're like, I have a podcast.
Yeah.
And he was like, oh, I love Nicholas Cage.
I love him.
He's always watchable.
He always just, you know, he keeps pumping out those movies,
though, not all of them good, because he buys a bunch of stuff.
He has the action comics number one.
Like he's telling me about Nicholas Cajun.
No sir, I know, I realize he's a,
he turns out a lot of crap for the money.
Have you guys ever watched City of Angels for Cajmas?
The wings of desire remake?
I love that movie.
Did you?
What was the song from?
Do Dole song. Iris.
Was it?
Just see me. Right. Yeah.
What? No, but wasn't also that Sarah McLaughlin, like in the
yard. I thought that was from sad animal commercials.
Yes. No, that one is that that's a here in Muglachun's song. Oh,
okay. She I mean a lot of her songs are really. I think a lot of things could be in the arms of
angels guys. I don't know if the internet is. Harps, feathers that have fallen out of their wings.
Occasionally it's a trumpet to herald the Almighty. Now you think that Angel Shed Feathers,
as divine beings, I would assume that the feathers
just stay in the whole time.
And get really gross and dirty,
because they're just the same feathers
with all the crap floating around in heaven,
getting stuck in them.
I don't think so.
Wait a minute, I think they shed those things.
Is that why birds shed feathers?
Because they get crap stuck in them. I guess a reason as any okay. I guess so so look
So Dan Dan why so you so the bartender asked a very good question to you why are you watching the wicker man
Why did you decide that we should watch the wicker man for this are
300 episode spectacular? I don't actually think I was the one who suggested I think it may have been Stewart but it was probably me because we're because we want to do a Nicholas Cage movie
and we've done a whole bunch of these episodes and we're like what's a classic good bad Nicholas
Cage movie. Yeah we were going back you know for the 300th episode we decided let's not just
like pick some piece of crap that he did this year let's go back and do sorry kill chain.
did this year. Let's go back and do... Sorry, kill chain.
Yeah, let's go back and do the one that many heralded as a new bad movie classic when it
came out, but was before our time making this podcast.
See you next year, primal. Catch you on the flip side, the guardian.
I think they did come out with a lot of movies recently. I feel like the Wicker Man was the moment that a lot of people realized for the first time
like, oh, he's making some real bad movies these days.
Yeah.
Because this was also like a big release.
A lot of the movies that we've been doing with him lately are small movies, the little
minis, little movie minis.
Well, this is like, you just fun-sized.
You just pop a bite, pop a man and he ended up eating more than you would if it was a
full-sized movie.
Yeah.
Because they're so small and you're like, oh, I thought I was going to get saved calories just pop a bite, pop a man and he ended up eating more than you would if it was a full-size movie. Yeah.
Because they're so small and you're like, oh, I thought I was going to get saved calories,
but eating his fun-size, Nicholas Cage mini movies.
It's like, oh, no.
And I have more Nick Cage in my belly than I thought I would if I just had a full-size
Nick Cage.
Yeah.
How, how is this remind of you of how irritating Ellie can be?
Are you getting flashbacks?
I just love how the store just like blacks out.
Yeah, I like it. You like it, you like it. I just love how that's stored just like blackout
Yeah, so this is also this is also a movie that has a
Relatively well-known supporting cast you have your france Conroy, you have Ellen person. You got Lillie Sobiesky
Parker star and it also has a
Lillie Sobiesky at the time a relatively hot indie director
Yeah, Neil Neal Le Butte who taught at IPFW the community college
In my hometown of Fort Wayne Indiana, and I feel like I feel like Neil Le Butte should be addressed a little bit off the top of the mood
Okay, dear dear Neil Le Butte. how are you doing? What's going on? Near Le Butte, one, two, three Le Butte Street.
Okay. Well, you see Los Angeles, California.
He was a playwright and then, you know, he made movies. His first, I don't know, his first
movie overall, the first one that got his name in the company.
In the company, man.
In the company of men, which at the time, so this is a movie about sort of an alpha male
who enlists a beta male in this plot
to sort of romantically destroy a woman
and he's doing it for his own kind of personal business
advancements.
A lot of it was shot in Fort Wayne, Indiana, my hometown.
And the end of the movie is like the weaker man,
like realizes.
No, no, the wicker man, Dan, the wicker man.
The weaker of the two men realize.
The weaker of the two men.
Realizes that he has actual feelings for this woman,
but of course, he's treated her horribly.
And she is deaf and he's sort of yelling at her,
trying to get her to pay attention to him.
I don't think that's gonna help.
And yeah.
And she does not to him. I don't think that's gonna help. And yeah. And she does not hear him.
She just sees him like sort of silently like trying to do this.
And it plays as this kind of final, small triumph
over these horrible men that she does not have to listen to him.
At the time watching this movie,
I thought, okay, this is like about what we now would call
toxic masculinity.
It's taking the woman's side. But then as Neil will you has made more and more movies, you're like, oh, no, maybe he's just a misogynist.
As you'll see in the Wicker Man.
That reaches its full flower in the Wicker Man, a movie in which Neil, Nicholas, as I'd say, Neil Cage.
Nicholas Cage punches or kicks no fewer than three women.
It's true.
We're all like, and this is a guy who's in action movies.
So it's a little bit, it's like, as bad as it would be,
it's even worse because he's a guy who you know
like works out, is used to fighting John Travolta.
Like, you know, at least those parts weren't boring.
Like the rest of it.
Oh, wow, yeah, I guess you're right.
And this is part of the motorcycle period
of Nicholas Cage movies, where his character,
one of his character's defining traits
is that he is a motor cyclist.
Yeah, as we see the opening scene.
In the opening.
So should we jump into the movie?
Let's do it.
Should we jump into my summary?
Yeah.
First thing we see is Aaron Eckert sitting as a trucker
at a truck stop dining.
So I don't think we need to go into such detail on it,
but Nicholas Cage, he is playing Edward Malice.
I will refer to him from this point on as Nick Cage.
He's kind of a moody California motorcycle cop.
And the first time we're introduced to him,
it's a woman who the woman working at the diner calls him honey.
Honey.
That is not a coincidence.
No, because honey will play an important role in movie.
Not Honey Boy, the current film.
I wonder what, I want to see that.
Have you guys watched that?
I got a screener for it.
Yeah, I got the screener, but I haven't watched it yet.
But I mean, I guess they turned Nick Cage
into a Honey Boy by the end of it.
We're looking at that, yeah.
So he gets interrupted by that waitress
while he's looking at some self-help tapes or a self-help paperback
That's on the spinner rack. I think it's a take because he refers to his tapes later guys
This is really important to the plot of the movie. Let's get back to that. She says your salads up
So the first 12-hour episode of the flop
But we never find out if you ate the salad. That's true.
Because then it cuts to the road.
Yeah, maybe he took the salad to go.
So he's eating a salad when he rides his motorcycle down the highway.
He eats to stop and people left and right.
He's a good motorcycle cop.
One day, he pulls over a mother whose young daughter has been throwing a doll out the
window of the car.
And as he's retrieving the doll, a huge truck hits the car and it bursts into flames.
It comes out of nowhere.
And the truck seemingly disappears.
Like I don't know.
That's even in that it just kind of keeps going.
He tries to save the girl who is very stoic while the car around her is in flames and he's
trying to smash to the back window, but he fails and it explodes before he can get her
out.
That's the first of many failures for Nicholas Cage.
And he sinks into the cool oblivion of passing out.
Wait, when he picked the dollop off the road, was that reminiscent for you guys of the
moment in Conair when he had the bunny and he's like, put, give the bunny back. That's what I thought of.
I mean, that's the thing when you have one of these legacy actors, right?
It's that almost everything he does is weighted with such significance.
If you judge it all against a future race.
Oh, yeah.
Ultra.
Three years, owner, too, where like the biker like pulls the actual baby off the ground.
Am I?
Yeah.
The baby is sitting in a car seat on the ground
and the biker drives by and lifts it up
and puts it on the front of his bike.
So I mean, we also, within wheels,
every shot of the movie pays homage to it
to another Nicholas Cage movie.
It's funny image raising his owner
because much as in that movie,
in the next scene, Nicholas Cage is sitting on a couch.
He is, and I'm sure that's a deliberate mirroring.
He has fallen into a depression. His friend, a lady cop comes by to give him his mail that was being collected at the station for some reason and
she's like, oh, you got your commendation. I don't want it to be like, why? He failed.
Yeah, they never found the bodies. That's the other thing. They never found the body. So why did he get a commendation for this thing?
Like they only have his word that he was like trying to help
that he didn't do anything.
He tricked a truck into running over a car.
Are they saying that when that car exploded,
the heat was like that at the center of a nuclear weapon
and it vaporized the woman and the girl inside the car.
Come on.
Well, guys, look, earlier this week,
I watched the original Wicker Man before watching this.
No, I like the original one.
Yeah, no, it's a good movie.
But I want to, I will bring it up a couple of times,
hopefully not too much, but to make some
instructive parallels.
And this points to two things where I think this movie
goes wrong.
Number one, the fact that the bodies disappear,
points to some sort of actual supernatural thing that happens in this movie.
Whereas the wicker man, you're never quite sure the original. You're never quite sure whether
there's actual power to these pagan rituals or whether they're just a much of misguided,
crazy people. Who's seen some really great songs? And number two.
Yeah, number two. You do have some great songs in the original one yeah number two this movie the remake
seems to think it needs to give Nicholas Cage a tragic backstory as
motivation for wanting to find a lost girl when like the fact that he's a
police officer is enough in and of itself and then later on we find out this
lost girl is his so I mean it's not motivation when he's a police officer in california and it's
happening in washington yeah well california is higher up in the in the
pyramid of where you can be a cop so it's like if you're new york hot your
cop everywhere you go but if you're a cop like i don't know say for when
in the end of you you know you know you're not a cop if you get other places
and similarly if you're from Detroit and you go to Beverly Hills, nobody takes you
seriously as a cop.
And that's why you got to be goofy and stick bananas into gaspipes.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
So I'd say two things I want to mention about the original Wicker Man as long as you're
open up that can of Wicker Worms is that the original Wicker Man is very much about
a man of traditional faith who is who has set against a an
a prudish man who has set against this pagan very like a like fertility sexual atmosphere
and you really feel like he is worried about his soul throughout the whole movie and
here they're trying to make it I guess that Nick Cage is worried about his sanity but
it's Nick Cage you know he's crazy so it doesn't yeah yeah they deal like he's like
a big crazy this like a big crazy,
this is a big crazy Nick Cage performance where he just kind of like runs from scene to scene,
kind of acting dumb, doing strange things like going,
bursting into a classroom and wiping off the chalkboard.
Yeah.
And there's, and the first one is very much like this guy,
it's a confrontation between old religion and you could say older religion.
You know, and in this one, it's just a confrontation,
I guess, between a man who hates women
and all these women who hate men.
Yeah, I was trying to figure out what they thought
the metaphor was or what Neil would be
thought the metaphor was, because it does seem like,
okay, I'll tell you down, the metaphor is B.
The masculine versus the feminine is all I can think of it's very strange because like
a charitable reading would be that the women have this power that men can't comprehend but it comes
off as just like women are villains is the i mean that is i don't i think that is the reading i think
the reading of the movie is women are villains and they if they give them power they'll destroy men
yeah but the other thing i want to mention is that because of that, that kind of like, to put it,
just put it one way like Christianity, Catholicism versus paganism, the old movie, the old movie
is like really erotic, like really strongly erotic.
Yeah.
In the way it's got, it's got Christopher Lee in it, dude. Christopher Lee and his ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- ex- sex god there's a reason that count that there's a reason they have all those count dooku sleeping pillows that look like him and you put him in your bed
It's because the lightsaber's got some English on it. Yeah, they were every time they were putting the Frankenstein makeup on him
When he was playing the monster they're like got a slather on more makeup. This guy is just too sexy. Come on
We can't have a sexy Frankenstein monster and you wore all did that already actually hadn't been so should we should we keep talking about
A movie that we didn't watch for the podcast or the movie we did watch for the point good point
so anyway Nick Cage his male gets brought to him by his co-worker turns out his
ex fiance willow woodward she ran away before the he get married she moved back
to her home a secretive island compound commune in Washington state called
Somersile where they make honey and she writes and says my daughter Rowan has
disappeared and I need your help.
And her handwriting is impeccable.
It's perfect.
Her handwriting looks like someone printed out a letter
using a handwriting font, which I suspect they did.
So do we want to point out that her name is Willow Woodward
and Willow is a Woodward, just like your daughter Rowan
is, that's also a Woodward.
Interesting.
I want to point out that, I mean, this comes from the original Wicker Man,
so I can't make one of it too much in relation to this movie.
Wicker Man is sacred, George.
Wicker is also a woodward.
Okay.
But that's true.
But Summersile, this island, you would think it's just called Summersile,
but it's named after someone called Summersile.
You find out.
It's like the outer bridge crossing
Yeah, it's named for a man named out of bridge
What does these things happen life is funny that way you know life is beautiful Dan. I'm Joe and I'll bridge a bass
But Rowan is a kind of tree. Yeah, I don't know that. Yeah, I'm kind of tree isn't oh
I guess I'll Google what what was that?
By you, Hallie. What answer was that?
Deciduous or coniferous.
I would like to know that.
Yes, among other things.
So, something that we'll see later is all the women are named after plants.
And Nicholas Cage gets frustrated by this as if they're doing it to insult him.
And when he meets later, he meets sister Rose, he goes, of course, another plant.
As if they're just doing it to bug him, which is hilarious. Nicholas Cage is like, I have nothing going on in my life and I need to find a girl to
make up for the girl I couldn't save.
So I'm going to do this.
He goes up to Washington State.
He takes a boat up and sees a girl who looks like Rowan and imagines a truck hitting her
on the boat and takes some pills.
This is also the moment where I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, is Neil Lebut trying to remake
Wicker Man or trying to remake don't look now
There's a little bit of both and he's failing at both of them
So he's going to he bribes delivery pilot to take him to the island and then wades ashore
To find some dower women who tell him this is private property
And they're with these two silent guys holding a sack of something and the sack is wet
So I assume it's bleeding and there's something struggling inside it and they're like take a look
And he goes to look and it jumps before he can see what's in it and he shut any any flinches and they laugh at him
And he walks away and we never find out what was in that sack
But they're like it's not your girl or something
And the whole scene I'm like what is the point of this scene?
Like what?
I don't understand that.
What do you think was in the sack?
Yeah, what do you think was in that sack?
I would say there's probably a bunch of like raspberries
and some kind of an animal that likes eating raspberries.
Like a little bear coat.
So like the bear cub is good.
They reward it by giving it a little bit,
a couple minutes in the raspberry sack.
Yeah, and he's mad because when they start to open up the bag,
they're like, my time's not done yet.
He's like, I've been counting in my head.
I'm not done eating raspberries.
You guys are really like putting an emphasis
on that pee of raspberries.
That's how bears talk to him.
That's how bears talk to him.
It pronounced every letter in the word.
They're like, negative is falling,
but I want to eat more raspberries.
So then he goes, doesn't he go into like
the local bar or hotel?
You know, it's interesting though, bear's love honey.
Oh, you're right.
Hallie bears do love honey and dogs love trucks.
Hmm, interesting.
So what?
Let's move on.
And okay, so he goes into the bathroom.
I want to explore this a little more
He goes into the local like in or cafe and it's all women there and already he
Mothers from self-home must be ladies night and I'm like, fuck you. Come on. I miss like this and
Willow works there and so does sister Beach a very humorless woman and she is
hilarious performance is hilarious and she serves him some meat and explains to him what meat is.
And he sees a bee on the bar and he kills it by slamming his mug down on it, right?
But not after it. Not until after he like takes a nice hearty gulp of that.
You know what? That's all I really wanted to this movie is to see a Nicholas Cage
that can choke down some meat.
Now I've never had meat. Have any of you guys ever had?
Yeah, of course. No. So what's it like? Well, it's usually too syrupy sweet for my
task. Yes, it's honey wine. It's it's it's it can be okay. I have a I so this
will surprise not Stewart knowing the college that we went to together. A
Harvard University. Yeah. Harvard University. Yeah ours had her wedding and her hobby was making me cool.
And so there was so much of me to the wedding. And you know, it's not bad. I would not choose
to drink it normally, but you know, when you're hard up, but when you got the shakes,
you'll drink anything, you know, when on summer's aisle, do as the summer's aisleers do,
I guess. So, Halley, you've never had me, right?
No.
Okay, so what would you imagine it would taste like?
I thought it was like, I didn't know that it tasted sweet.
I thought it was like more beer, like, you know, like a,
like a Guinness or something.
Oh, okay, like a, like a porter or a scout.
Exactly.
See, because I always imagined Shabbats beer.
Yeah, if you've ever been to a medieval times. They serve you like a vegetable soup
But you don't have a spoon because they didn't have spoons back then
Nope, and so you have to like have a bowl with a handle and you tip it into your mouth to drink it
I was soon me it was kind of like that
Like a low-grade vegetable soup that you drink with your other classmates on a field trip
While you watch guys in kind of cloth
night costumes.
And that's the same reason why they let you drink Coca-Cola there at a medieval times
because they had it right then.
They had that back then because of a time portal.
Cool.
It was like the kid got in King Arthur's court.
Oh yeah.
That's how that kid made his millions.
I mean, to be honest, if you had Coca-Cola producing facilities, and you brought them to medieval
times, you would become richer than the king.
People would become addicted to that.
And also back then, the water was not that good.
So you know what?
Just Coke it down.
Just drink Coke.
That was the original slogan.
Just Coke it down.
Just Coke it. And you you know King Arthur would be like
Oh, that is the real one baby. Uh-huh. What was that Pepsi?
That was that Pepsi never mind. Okay, so right now we we he finally finds one of the objects of his search
He finds willow once again another woodward
Like he said once again, even though that was the same one that you pointed out before okay Okay, then sister beach is a woodward there. I covered it. Um, and we're the
birdsteen. Yep. Uh, and so he runs into Willow while they make up his room, I guess it's
the whole thing goes very quickly and strangely. Yeah, and Willow's like, I don't trust anyone
here. I know Rowan's been taken somewhere and a bell rings and she's like, I gotta go and she leaves.
Can I say, we got Cytrak by talking about B.
No, you cannot say it.
You cannot say it.
It's important.
We got Cytrak by talking about B.
No, you can't say it.
But Nicholas Cage killed the B because he's allergic to Bs.
Oh, thank you, he's allergic to Bs.
And this is reinforced when he is unpacking his bag
and we see his B epipens that he's brought with them,
which either he has great foresight knowing that it's a honey producing island or he
just brings them everywhere.
I think we have a bee allergy.
You bring your epipans everywhere, Elliot.
What if he was going on like on a laskin cruise?
You have to bring it everywhere, Elliot.
That's through everywhere.
Yes.
Everywhere.
Yes.
You never know.
Even the bathroom.
Even. There's one of those bees in that toilet. I was going to be. Yeah, you. Even the bathroom. Even don't seem quite as serious,
they don't seem quite as scary, but if you do have them and you've suffered from them, it's terrifying.
I just think it's in it like... Yeah, I don't have allergies, which is why...
But like, you'll... Like, for instance, in hereditary, there's a scene where a character suffers from an
allergy attack, and it's horrifying and terrifying, but I don't feel like the allergy is really that,
is that scary in this movie, but.
No, they don't use it. Well, he doesn't seem to.
As someone who does have allergies, one shame on you, Stuart,
for shaming me. Oh, well, not like threatening ones.
You have like... No, although one time I was in a friend's
apartment in Chicago of all places and there,
there was so much animal hair all over the apartment that I could feel my throat starting to close up
And I was too polite to say anything because I was with some of my wife's friends
And I still felt kind of awkward around them and I was like this is how I'm gonna die
I'm gonna suffocate to death because I don't
And then Danielle saw me and she was like we got to get out of here. Hey everybody. Let's go outside
And I was like, oh thank goodness.
But okay, but no it's true.
They don't make much of his allergy,
so it's like the movie,
it's also like the movie has to remind Nicholas Cage
that he's allergic to bees in this
because he just kind of seems to forget about it.
Okay, where he finds himself in the exact center
of what like a honey patch, what do you call that thing?
Well, there's a bunch of honey bees. Let's just say a honey patch. Yeah, a that thing? Well, there's a bunch of honey bees.
What's it say honey patch?
Yeah, a honey pot.
He, all of a sudden he realizes that he's in way too deep
and everywhere he turns, he's surrounded by more hives
and you're like, why did you go this far in buddy?
Yeah, and also why you pack your epipans
but apparently don't have them on you at this point.
You take your gun everywhere you go
but not your epipans.
All right, when you're on B Island.
So, ironically, his favorite actress, B Arthur.
Well, I guess that's I-
I guess that's I-
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, because she was part B.
That's why she had that name.
Oh, okay.
I mean, I guess that's the foresight.
It was from the waist down, though, and because she wore all those kind of like loose
bill of clothes on the golden girls, it was hard to tell.
But there were always pants suits.
How can you hide that in pants?
Mm-hmm.
Do you like slide part of your abdomen down
one of the billowy legs of your pantsuit?
I have to assume they had to strap her abdomen
and stinger to one of her legs
so that it was in one of the billowy legs of the pantsuit.
Yes, it was.
Wasn't she like a nude model in the beginning of her career?
Let's look it up.
I think she'd be a hither of trouble believing Let's look it up. I think she's a bit harker.
I've trouble believing that maybe.
No, I think it's true.
I think it's true.
Dan checks his Mr. Sking in the hot lane.
We looked up a, looking at the room.
And we never heard of the room before.
I never heard the results of the row and tree.
Oh yeah, so this is an important part about guess
where a Stuart reads, the row ands or mountain ashes,
are shrubs or trees in the genus
Sorbus of the Rose family
Rosacea I
I say Stewart that the genus Sorbus sounds like a band you know the genus Sorbus
Hey guys, I went to go see genus Sorbus at St. Vitus the other night. It was pretty good
Dan you didn't look on the Wikipedia page. You're looking just for Google image. This looks like it. Just Google. Jan, just Google be Arthur. No, it's
will come up. Google it. There is a picture. She was not a, she was not a nude model, but there
was a naked painting by John Curran of be Arthur. No, that sold, let's see, for one, well, it's expected to sell. I don't know what it actually sold for,
but this article says expected to sell for 1.8 to 2.5 million. Wow.
So is that, that's that, that's that, uh, Sotheby's and Christie's Mr. Skin auction.
Yeah. So for a couple of million dollars, you two could have a painting of Be Arthur Newt in your home.
I've been pending the desire of this person to sell.
It's okay.
So anyway, Nicholas Cage,
she has a bad dream of that car crash we see.
We're gonna see that car crash scene
with the truck many times throughout the movie.
And he wakes up to see a little girl running around outside.
She tries to find her by poking around in an old barn forever.
It looks a lot like Tevius barn from Fifthor on the roof,
just full of horse and stuff.
And he falls through an old floor and then pulls himself back up,
ending one of the two or three, I guess,
the reals scenes in the movie.
Yeah, I was watching the same thing.
Like, okay, I guess this movie is nominally like a horror film.
And we're supposed to think that Nicholas Cage, I guess this movie is nominally a horror film.
And we're supposed to think that Nicholas Cage
almost falling through an old barn is terrifying.
I mean, look, if I was in that position,
yes, I would be terrified.
We got to play it by, are you afraid of the dark roots?
I would watch as a kid, and I would say,
it's not scary to watch, but if I was in that situation,
I would be scared.
Yeah. But watching it on a phone screen in a bar, I was not like, oh no, Nickless Cage is going
to die in this barn.
And then who knows what the rest of the movie is going to be?
I'm not, I'm not faulting.
I mean, it is a bad scene and it's very boring.
But I feel like you can't totally fault Neil Lebut for your decision to watch it on a
phone at a bar.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, was this around the time where he goes back to his hotel room and he's like, has
anyone been in my room?
Did somebody, I'm missing some tapes.
Well, that was a different impression.
He's a different person.
He's got a different story.
He over here is some people, thank you, I've been working out.
He over here is some people talking about the Wicker Man and he's like, does anyone, I'm
missing my tape of Iron Maiden's
Brave New World album getting single, The Wicker Man?
That he overhears, Sister Beach is just like
constantly casually talking about, she's like,
yeah, yeah, yeah, we gotta get ready for
the ritual of death and rebirth.
And it's like, they're just so casually talking about
the things that are supposed to be spooky in the movie,
but it was, I wanted to make the point,
which I feel like I had I have deja vu about this.
So I may have said it at the podcast or somewhere else before that this scene in the barn was
when I realized, Oh, this isn't a movie.
This is me watching someone play like a point and click computer adventure game, like
missed or like salmon max hit the road or one of those type or like a zork type game,
where it's like a non-text
is working what's like where Nicholas Cage walks out of the end and it's like, hmm,
what location should I go to?
The woods, the barn, town square.
I'll go to the barn.
Item flashlight.
Use flashlight on stall.
I see a horse.
Okay.
Use flashlight on stairs.
Go upstairs.
Okay.
Oh, a crow.
It's like so much of this movie is him going to a location, having a perfunctory conversation
with somebody where they give him some information and then him yelling at them and then leaving
him going somewhere else.
Well, certainly, like, later on where he goes to, is it Francis Conroy's at the actress?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, when he interacts with her, like, and he sneaks in after she leaves and is like, oh, I find book that explains everything.
I find a letter, like photograph of Rowan.
You know, it's like, okay, I mean, you'll come to see that they're leading him down the
garden path, but if you don't know that, it's so funny.
It's like, okay, well, all these obvious clues are just a little shrewd about.
If you didn't know that, it would feel kind of like what they're trying to do
in under the silver lake where this guy is like,
constantly searching for clues that validate
his like detective work.
Yeah, and there's no atmosphere to any of this stuff.
I think they made a mistake in setting
an ostensible horror movie on a beautiful island
where it's
constantly kind of golden light.
And there's just, it just looks gorgeous all the time.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, it works and it works in the summer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it works in the original Wicker Man too, but those are different types of movies.
You know, the next morning at the cafe, his waitress, Lili Sobiuski shows up to tell him
why there is an empty little squeeze bear of honey on the table.
When the silent is famous for its local honey, turns out last year's honey crop was cursed.
It was terrible.
And on the wall of photos, where there's a picture of the harvest girl at every year's harvest,
last year's picture is missing.
Uh oh.
And then Miss Beach once again is like, oh, yeah, we got the festival fertility tomorrow.
It's sacred.
What of it?
And Lili Sobieski does not recognize his photo of Roen,
she says, and says, when you leave, please,
take me with you.
And he's like, what?
And then walks away.
Nicholas Cage in his parambulations
is Amulous parambulations on the island.
He next, this is one of the first, like,
great funny scenes in the movie,
where he wanders into a one-room school house
where Molly Parker, as sister Rose, is teaching. and she goes what what is the man's role and these two girls
to school.
Phallic symbol, phallic symbol.
And then he interrupts and is like, Hey, I'm a cop.
I'm looking for a girl who is missing.
And they're like, look in that desk and he looks at a desk and there's a raven trapped
in it.
And then they're like, we trapped a raven in there to see how long he could hit
He could take it before he went and say and he's like that seems a little on the nose with what's going on in the movie
But okay sure and he sees the attendance book and sees Rowan's name is listed even though everyone's like I don't know who that is
And he's like you're all liars you're liars and you're liars and Molly Parker really plays up the like
Coily Molly Parker really plays up the like coily like I don't know like sneaky thing
Yeah, I recognize that actress. Yeah, she was in deadwood. She was in lots of stuff
She's in six feet under was she in the Francis Conroy did anyone else watch that movie her smell
The I haven't seen it yet. I think she was part of the distribution team. I want I think she might be. I think she might be. I think she might be. I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be.
I think she might be. I think she might be. I think she might be. I think she school teacher. I think that comes across. And she's like, she does that co-think.
She's like, we don't talk about Rowan.
She died.
But we don't say dead here.
We say she's in the air and in the clouds.
How did she die?
Oh, she'll burn to death.
What did you say?
Exactly what I meant to say.
She burned to death.
And it's like, come on.
That's right.
Come on movie.
Like, and it's, again, as you
guys mentioned, they're leading him into a trap. And if you don't know that, then you're
like, this is a sloppy movie. You do that, you're like, these are sloppy traps.
You can make a movie about a guy who is in a deep investigation and in a situation where
he can't kind of trust himself or trust the people around him
or like, I don't know, like Jacob's ladder or something, but this movie is not that movie.
No, it's so ham-hand. It feels like, I mean, and in Leela Butte had made movies for this,
but it feels almost like a college film trying to do that, but with a bigger budget.
Nicholas Cage, he's like, well, that wasn't very helpful.
Oh, and that's also the scene where she goes,
I'm sister Rose, and he goes, of course,
when he goes, of course, another plant.
And it's like, it's like, that's what you're catching onto,
that everyone has plant names,
but not any of this other stuff.
And I said at this point that you're really like,
okay, Nicholas Cage, you gotta get it off this island
and get some backup.
And the movie does a fairly good job at least of like, okay, Nicholas Cage, you gotta get it off this island and get some backup. And the movie does a fairly good job, at least, of like showing how like trapty is at this
place.
But I, again, to go back to the original movie, I prefer the original movie where it seems
like the detective probably could get off the island much earlier once he realizes that
things are going badly, but he has this pig headed confidence that because he's a moral officer of the law that like he will triumph and he can walk through
any situation on Skade.
Just like how Nicholas Cage is a very strong man that can easily punch and kick his way
out of any problem.
Yeah.
Further record.
Molly Parker is not in her smell.
I was mixing her up with Amber Herd.
Oh, I mean, incredibly similar.
They both, they look sound and act differently.
But you know, otherwise, I, Dan, I appreciate you
to the word pig headed since later.
Everyone's gonna get them some animal heads.
Nicholas Cage, he goes to a ruined graveyard
looking for Owens grave.
Willow's there and she's like,
hey, by the way, you're her dad.
Should I have mentioned that beforehand?
No. You guys, we're totally overlooking the fact she's like, hey, by the way, you're her dad. Should I have mentioned that before, Anthony? No.
You guys were totally overlooking the fact
that he takes off his coat all the time,
even when he jumps in the, okay, he has this coat
that is a blazer.
Yeah, he wears it over a sweater vest.
Yeah, and it has patches on the elbows.
But for some reason, he's willing to do anything
and get as dirty as possible,
but he always takes off his blazer.
So like he jumps in the lake when he's like,
he has a hallucination that Rowan is trapped under the dock
and he jumps in the water.
But first, takes off his blazer.
Even though he thinks she's drowning.
I mean, yeah, lean on him.
Yeah, but when he takes his blazer off, she's gonna be drowned or not drowned.
She was.
Because he thinks he sees her body.
He starts seeing rowing everywhere and he swims to it.
And this is, now we get to my favorite moment in the move.
Where he wakes up, he's like underwater and he's like,
ah, and then he wakes up on the dock and he looks down.
He's holding her wet, sodden body in his arms and goes,
oh, and then without even giving you any time for it to like settle in, he wakes up again on the
dock and goes, God damn it. And it's with such annoyance. And it is, they're trying to pull off
like a double wake-up wake-up scare, like a jump, like a fake wake-up that becomes a dream.
But it's so, they run through it so quickly and his response to it is so not scared, but
just so annoyed.
He's like Bob Odin Kirk in any Mr. Show sketch just being like, God damn it, what are you
doing?
I like how your misspeaking created a neologism there with a fake up.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, it's a fake up.
When you think of their waking up, but it's actually still a dream.
But it is so, it feels like, I mean, I wonder if this is it that
Neil of you was like what is a more commercial method for me to get across the idea that women are evil
I'll do a horror movie I guess but I'm not really that interested in the scares
So why don't I just rush through those as as profunked really as possible. So I can get, can get to the scenes of women bedeviling and laughing at a
Nicholas cage and him hitting them.
Because this movie totally lives up to, until the very ending, it totally lives up
to Margaret Atwood's quote that everyone's been banding about for the past few
years about how women are, men are afraid women will laugh at them and women are
afraid women will kill them.
Because throughout the movie women are, like, a laughing at Nicholas Cage and he responds by punching them in the face.
Yeah, it's it's really crazy and I don't know I don't know what this says maybe about
me, but I think it's really strange that when Willow reveals that he's the row and
dad that he never really considered that before this point. Like it seems crazy to me that he didn't,
that wasn't like the first thing he thought of
when he started like, saw the girl and he's like,
we were engaged like doing, like he doesn't do any math,
he doesn't do any attempt to be like,
wait a minute, wait a minute.
Oh.
Like, he doesn't like,
he's like, he's heading to the point house.
Yeah, he doesn't like, look sure he's letting you to the point how yeah he doesn't like
look at the picture and he's like oh maybe maybe she's big for big for her age or something
I mean she doesn't really look like him that's true she's always wearing that red sweater
and he never wears her if she was wearing a blazer. That would be different. Yeah. Daddy's girl. If it was a photograph of her yelling at someone, it would be like, oh, yeah, of course,
that's my baby.
Sure.
Now, Halle, you being the only woman here, aside from, I know Dan, you've been kind of digging
out your feminine side recently, and I really like that.
But Halle, being the only woman here, how did this movie strike you?
Veeza V being about a man running around screaming it
Win. I mean it was so bad that I wasn't I wasn't like palpably offended by it because it it
The the misogyny didn't really resonate when it was executed so poorly
That's fair that's fair. Yeah, okay, so Nicholas Cage next he's gonna get some information from Dr. Moss another plant name Francis Conroy from six feet under many
other things and as mentioned before when he gets to her house there's just like
photographs of rituals everywhere and all these books about burning people
alive as sacrifices he breaks and I learned this movie I will say very young
looking skin the most the makeup artist in this movie that I will say very young looking skin. The
most makeup artists in this movie. That's what I want to know. And
Ellen Berson, they both look great. Yeah. They look like women who are on top of
their game and have nothing really to worry about other than arranging a
sacrifice and making sure these bees produce honey. And otherwise, they just get
to relax and enjoy the beautiful islands they live on. And they're beautiful
long hair, which is hard to pull off when you get older, you know your hair gets brittle
It turns it's like peanut brittle
Exactly it's delicious, but it's hard to manage
It's not when it makes snakes pop out of it
That only happens to Medusa damn okay when
Gremah is sapping Thadin's life energy,
his hair gets all thin and brittle,
but then when Gandalf kicks Gremah to the curb,
his hair gets all lustrous again, right?
Is that why, Halley?
I think it's still written,
till you said Gandalf, I was like,
which thing is this?
Which fantasy thing is this?
Is this a warhammer thing that he's talking about yeah
So and he goes and he finds a room full of babies and jars like tons of babies and jars
Yeah, you're like what am I the alamo jar F.T.A.s in Brooklyn? Yeah, like more than the more than the usual number of babies and jars
I mean like you might I can understand a local doctor having like one baby in a jar
Uh-huh the whole room. It's like Dr., you want him to sit her down and be like,
Dr. Moss, this is an intervention.
You're a baby hoarder.
You are just forgaring too many babies and jars.
And it's time to say goodbye to some of them.
And she's like, no, it's the only thing that makes me feel safe is to hold onto these babies and jars.
I might need them at some point.
It's like, no, no, you just got to clean it out.
And then he like takes Dr. Moss, like on some excuse, he takes her away for the day and her relatives come and clean out all those dead babies and jars
What's gone my baby wasn't in there?
What I
Said my baby wasn't in there
So glad to hear that
He was sleeping in his room while I watched the movie
You but you but you rushed rushed into double check to make sure
that wasn't one of your babies.
Yeah, to be fair, we don't have a baby monitor,
so actually it could have been.
But he was there this morning, so I don't think it was.
So unless Dr. Moss kidnapped your baby,
put him in a jar and then returned him the next day.
In which case, she took very good care of him,
and she could do it again.
And maybe I'm out of line here,
but if your baby had been one of those babies,
he would have been the best baby in a jar possible, right?
Yeah, well, he would have gotten an IMDB page at least.
What I've said,
have their mother whispered.
They're baby.
So Nicholas Cage, he takes this opportunity to go
and yell at Willow about not telling him about things.
She's like, I'm sorry, and then they start making out.
Uh oh, you know that that's not what he should be doing
right now.
Nicholas Cage, he has like an interaction with one
of the male laborers on the island
who are all eerily silent, almost like their worker drones
who can't think for themselves and just serve some sort
of Queen B. Speaking of, he goes to Lady Summariol's house. Now, is she Lady Summariol or
Sister Summariol? I couldn't remember. I think it's Sister Summariol, right? Okay.
Summariol. I think maybe because in the movie, in the old, in the, because, uh,
Christopher Lee is Lord Summariol. So maybe I thought he was, she was Lady also. And she
lives in this place that's full of stone beehives.
It looks beautiful.
He walks over in this scene where he suddenly realizes he is surrounded by beehives and
the bees are like, it's Nicholas Cage, get him.
And the chase after him, he passes out and he wakes up in the house where Dr. Moss has
patched him up with Moss, I assume, and other herbal remedies that you would find around
the island.
I do think that like if they plan on eventually spoiler alert, sacrificing Nick Cage,
it's kind of irresponsible for them to just let him roam around and maybe get
die from being stung by bees.
Well, Dan, you've put your finger on the major problem I have with the movie, which is if they
are going to plan on sacrificing Nickless Cage, which they are. Why bother with all the fake mystery who done it,
clue bullshit?
Why not just lie to him to get him to the island?
When he gets to the island,
hit him over the head with something.
He wakes up inside a wicker man
and you light him on fire,
sacrifice accomplished, ritual over,
and you know what, all the time and energy you spent
into this trap, you could spend,
maybe making sure your B-harvest is better
than last time morons. Yeah, I mean, with a name like, you think spend maybe making sure your B-harvest is better than last time
morons.
Yeah, I mean, with a name like, you think with a name like cage, you would be extra nervous
about being imprisoned.
Yeah, to go back to the game.
And with a name, and you think with a name like smuckers, it has to be good, and yet
sometimes it's not.
Wait, question.
Okay.
Why?
Is this about smuckers?
My wicker.
You know, they got a deal at Pier 1, import, so I guess.
I guess so, because they should have just called it be man,
and then hadn't been a lot of hives or something.
Or called be movie.
They're just throwing a wicker at the end.
Like, it's a major plot point.
But yeah, I don't like the island's chief export is wicker.
And the whole time, he's like, we're
going to do something about all this wicker.
The wicker harvest is not good this year.
That would have been a good movie.
I do want to get back to Elliot's problem with the...
What, what, what had been a good movie, Hallie?
I do want to get back and address Elliot's problem with this movie just to say again, in
the original movie, you get the sense that they're toying with him because it is part of
like their pagan ritual that it is important that this man who, I think they say is a virgin, like, come of his own
volition to the place where he's going to be so close.
And like, they're leading him down the garden path to sort of fulfill all these points on
this ritual, whereas you don't necessarily get that sense in this movie.
He's supposed to be a virgin.
Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I guess, you know what the answer is, it probably gets pretty boring on Somersile. Yeah.
All the, the only things you have to do are
teach kids about phallic symbols,
make honey, attending B is his hard work,
but it's not the most exciting work.
We're just sitting around the end
drinking meat all day.
Or thinking about plant names.
They're just like making lists all day.
They're like, have we thought of a hyacinth? No. Probably. And at a certain point, They're like, have we thought of a high accent? And at a certain point they're like, Heather, of course, why did it take us so long to think
of Heather?
Oh, I like it.
Oh, I like it.
The thought of that first.
Because they're like, thistle, is that a name?
Yeah.
Is anyone named thistle?
Sister thistle, does that make sense?
Sister Fern, I guess we could do that
The like the fairies and mid-Summer night stream have like this on their name or something I don't know, but maybe I don't do is she part of the movie there's spiderweb and mustard seed. I know
Yeah, oh, they're like sister Venus flytrap is that two on the nose about what this movie is about maybe
So anyway this movie is about to kick into gear
because he's about to come face to face
with his arch nemesis lady Somersile, Ellen Burston.
And they play a little game of verbal cat and mouse
as she talks about her goddess religion and bees.
And Nicholas Cage eventually is just like,
look, I'm gonna kill everybody here
if you don't help me.
He just cannot put up with her, her like condescending whimsy, I guess.
Nicholas cage, he finds a doll and a grave, and he follows the sound of crying to a flooded
crypt, which someone locks him in and he hallucinates for a while, and then Willow lets me out.
And he's like, hey, I found him.
He stays down in that like flooded sister and for a whole, for like all night, right?
Yeah, he's there all night.
And you better believe that he didn't want to drown.
It's probably up all night.
What do you say?
He said, he must be so strong because he think about I tried.
I have to rock my baby to sleep.
My arms are exhausted.
Sorry, I keep talking about my baby, but it's kind of my thing right now.
It's my brand. I'm not sure if I've been posted at the end, sorry, I keep talking about my baby, but it's kind of my thing right now.
It's my brand. And similarly, staying alive
was Nicholas Cage's character's thing,
which is why hung on so tightly to that,
what, great, grating to keep above the water,
so he didn't drown in the flow that it actually.
But imagine you see that the whole night.
I mean, I guess your whole life.
Your whole life. So you get a little help.
And what's your close-get-water, right? When your clothes get super wet,'re all lighter, so you get a little help. And what's your close get water, right?
When your clothes get super wet, they become lighter, right?
Oh.
They float, float better.
And the whole time, you know, he's thinking, thank goodness, I took my blazer off.
I did not want my blazer to be adding to my body weight.
We're getting wet.
Patches.
Soak of a lot of water.
So he found Rowan's sweater down there.
It doesn't really matter.
He goes to the, sister summarized Isles house to yell at her,
but her house, all he finds is an old man,
covered in bee stings and a nude woman, covered in bees.
Okay, that's all there is at the house, I guess.
Meanwhile, she is in the biggest, most beautiful bedroom.
It looks like they hired Tarsam Singh
to just decorate this one room for her.
There's lots of big, huge draperies,
and they're like, they talk cryptically about how, I don't know know he's going into his trap. And there's nothing to look at. It's like
the Emperor's throne room in a Star Wars movie. Yeah. So this is now we're got just my opinion,
the best sequence in the movie. He steals sister roses by a gunpoint. She has an animal
mask and he's like take that mask off. He gets mad at masks when this went on and he
just rides around town on a rampage yelling at little girls and pulling animal masks off their head kicking open doors and yelling rowing into them.
And it's just like my favorite part of tear him.
Him ripping the mask off of children was my favorite part except for when he held a gun to that
woman and was like I need your bike. Yeah, I watched that bicycle scene and I was like I couldn't
imagine anyone thinking
during the production of the movie
that that could be anything but ridiculous.
Him bike-checking this woman's bike gun point
and then like kind of wobbly racing off on it.
Just the fact he's like, he keeps,
he is so at this point, I think it's supposed to be,
I'm not sure if we're supposed to be sympathizing with him
or if we're supposed to be like,
oh no, he's gone too crazy.
But he comes off as a madman who is just like, he literally just shot after shot at him
breaking doors down and yelling, rowing, rowing.
And then every time he comes across a mask, just knock it off somebody's head like a big
bully.
And almost always the result of him doing that leads to, it leads to women and children laughing at him.
That's the other thing.
I think that's what also makes the scene palpable
is no one seems particularly terrified
or scared of him that are just like,
oh, there he goes again.
Goofy Nick hates masks, hates women,
looking for a row in.
Oh boy, like he goes, he finds the pilot that brought him to the island. He's the pilot is dead in full of bees his mouth is all stitch up member. Yeah, the
for like the first real gross out scare slash genuine threat of violence in the movie. They put almost no effort into showing this guy's dead body or like
Nicholas Cage just sees it and he's like, oh, it walks away.
It's like gross bees.
He goes to, we over here, sister beach and sister oak.
They're joking a little about how she's putting on weight and she can't quite fit into
a bear costume anymore.
And they hint at having killed the pilot.
And then Nicholas Cage walks up and without a word just punches sister beach in the face.
Meanwhile everyone's getting ready for the big harvest ritual.
They're wearing animal masks.
They've got face paint on.
They're dancing and parading to pipe music.
It all feels very renfessed precious.
While Nicholas Cage is having a knuckles, knuckle dragging balls out, lily soby eski fight, which ends with him,
which ends with him back kicking her into the wall of photos.
And she just, I don't know if she did or what?
She's certainly not dead because she shows up later,
but like she gives a look like they were,
I feel like Neil the beat was like, okay,
hold on her for a moment,
we will digitally add some birds tweeting around her head.
Yeah.
And and much like the bike jacking earlier, this is a bear suit jacking. Like, uh, Nicholas Kay steals the bear suit.
He steals sister beaches bear suit.
And if I don't do anything from midsummer, putting on a bear suit in this situation is a good idea.
Also, no spoilers.
Well, I mean, it's fine.
I mean, I assume it's not because the Wingerman put it.
So he's wearing that bear suit and he joins the parade and he's like,
Willow, it's me in the bear suit.
And she's like, stop bothering me.
This is important.
And she sees that Rowan is tied to a stake.
And there's all sorts of ritual talk that they do.
And then he only has one superpower, punching women.
So he punches a woman and rescues Rowan and they chased into the woods by villagers.
But it turns out guys, as we've mentioned, it was all a trap.
As Admiral Akbar might say, it's a trap.
Rowan was just the lure to get Nicholas Cage there so they could sacrifice him.
And they spend I think six minutes explaining to get Nicholas Cage there so they could sacrifice him. And they spend, I think, six minutes explaining this
to Nicholas Cage because either they thought
the audience was dumb or they just were like,
you know what, let's just admit it.
Nicholas Cage's character is dumb.
He doesn't understand.
So they have to go over every single point of their career.
I remember, I mean, it's been a while since I've seen
the original, but I remember the reveal,
like up until the moment when he has rescued
Rowan and then she runs off like up until that point in the in the original
You still assume the little girls the sacrifice and when she runs off. It's a genuine twist like it's a real shock
And yeah, I don't feel like there was enough that it wasn't a surprise in this, but maybe it was, you know,
because I've seen enough folk horror movies at this point.
You guys.
A moment I liked here is Nicholas Cage pulls out his gun.
He's like trying to hold them off at gunpoint.
And finally, he like tries to shoot them.
And his gun is empty of bullets.
And I believe it's Willow like holds out her hand
and like drops the bullets and I'm like
okay she's just been holding these the whole time. The whole day. Yeah she's gonna shine
him on. Inticipating the reveal and we learn that Willow is actually sister Somersile's daughter.
What? All the women are in it together. It's a plot. Sisters are doing it for themselves.
And by,
Mother's a dad, it means sacrificing the cage.
Yeah.
And don't we see in the crowd,
don't we see the mother and daughter
who were in the car accident in the beginning?
And the cop.
And the lady cop.
And the lady cop because every single woman
in this world,
is part of the school.
And then,
if only it was C his mom was there.
Yeah, igloos cage.
His mom, Halley walks out, Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein walk out and Pallani a
Trump.
It's everybody.
And Tulsi Gabbard.
And Tulsi Gabbard and Hillary Clinton are like, we're actually friends.
See, and Queen Elizabeth, the second is there, the ghosts of famous women from history
there, Rosa Parks is there, Mary Todd Lincoln is there,
Cleopatra is there, all of human history
has been women waiting for this moment
when they could show to Nicholas Cage
that he is impotent before them.
Nicholas Cage representing, of course, all manhood
because he is the most manly man there is.
So Fiya Coppola was even there.
And he was like, but we're family.
And she's like, I don't care.
Yeah. She's like, but we're family. And she's like, I don't care. I don't care.
She's like, we're cousins barely.
I wish that a Nicholas Cage had had a moment
where he turns the camera and he was like,
and steals the line from the end of the movie,
the uninvited regos.
Oh, that was almost my mother-in-law
about Sister Summer's Isle, but,
because for anyone who doesn't know,
the uninvited is a genuinely scary ghost movie
with Raymeland that ends with him making a joke
about how that ghost was almost his mother-in-law.
Woof, and it's like, wait, what?
Why are we leaving on a gag?
Okay, so there's two different versions
of the scene that happens next.
In the unrated version, they pour bees in his face
and he screams for a while.
Oh, okay.
That was the home release version.
What, if you went on Amazon Prime like I did,
you went on the theatrical release version.
Yeah.
Where you hear him screaming and going,
ah, my legs, you crushed my legs,
like it's a radio play.
Well, we see them bringing him to the giant
Wicker Man statue and they put him in it.
It's full of goats and chickens and rowing lights
that on fire and the ladies are all chanting,
the drone must die with big smiles on the face.
Thank you, Elliot, for telling me this,
because I was like, is this a Mandela effect moment?
I swear there was a scene in this movie
where they put like a cage full of bees
over Nicholas Cage's head.
Yeah, I feel like we were used to watch that clip.
Yeah, and I'm like, what?
Where we did.
So that's from a different version of the movie
that was released only for home.
It was too hot for TV, right?
Yes, it was too hot for movie screens like this, but that's but that's the famous wicker man scene where he's like
Be killing me won't bring back your goddamn honey and they're just pouring bees on his face and he's like
It's but also only in the theatrical release not in that unrated version
So as far as I could tell, is the next scene,
the little epilogue, so Nicholas Cage is dead.
He's been burned to death in a wicker man.
Is the six months later seen.
Oh, yeah.
Six months, six months later comes up on screen
and Pupi are respond.
The greatest font of all times, or what knows.
Yeah, we think like, like the mummy, like Arnold Vaslo
and his gang is gonna show up
and start eating everybody with scared.
Or a couple of Navi. Oh, yeah, that's fair
And red a bar in a city James Franco is there and his buddy Jason Ritter. Yeah, so it's James Franco and Jason that I watched
Yeah, yeah, just listen to the Amazon Prime
I think I've told maybe when it said six months later, you're like, I don't care anymore
You turn like the movie ended six months ago
Yeah, you thought you thought that six months had passed and you were like better catch up on all that sleep that I miss
I was watching this movie. I was like my baby has learned to walk
You're missing all his great early moments while you're watching the wicker man. He's like he's like mama mama
You're like yeah, yeah, yeah, after the wicker man, he's like, he's like, mama, mama, you're like, yeah, yeah, after the wicker man, after the wicker man, it's too busy.
So James Franco and Jason Ritter are two bros at a bar just looking for tail and they cannot
find any until Lili Sobieski and her friend give them a come hither look and they start
hitting on them.
And there is a surprisingly long conversation between James Franco and Lili Sobieski about
how he's at the police academy.
He really wants to help people. Yeah, he's like, I just finished the police academy and she laughs and I'm like, I get a lot of the things that are really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really and Bobcat Goldway said some of them. Steve Goodenberg said most of them. They aren't they in all of them?
No, no, he joined later on.
Which one, Steve Goodenberg or Bobcat Goldway?
Bobcat Goldway.
Steve Goodenberg left early Bobcat Goldway joined late.
So he showed up as a villain in part two,
but he didn't actually join the squad until part three.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then was he in Miami with the others?
Of course.
Everyone's in the mission with tackle,
Larry and high tower and
with high tower.
And all men are patrol.
No patrol. Oh,
citizens.
That is the one I watched.
The police are like, Hey, just to make sure we can
guys, everybody in town is on parole right now.
It's just like let's crack down on all this stuff.
Okay.
You know that there is somebody, there's some guy in his 50s
in Hollywood, some screenwriter who has in his closet
like a police academy in space spec script that he wrote
that he was, he's just still waiting to pitch
to Steve Gutenberg, so.
But I would call it space academy.
So, Lily Sobiuski's like, hey, where are you going after this?
And he's like, home, and she goes, can you take me with you?
Or can I go with you or whatever it is?
And he's like, yeah, and then we hear the sounds
of bees buzzing and Nicholas Cage screaming
as we fade to credits.
And I wanna tell you, this movie, I looked it up.
This movie came out after Spider-Man.
So James Franco was already kind of a movie star in a way.
And he's appearing in this like tiny moment in the Wicker Man. So James Franco was already kind of a movie star in a way. And he's appearing in this like
tiny moment in the wicker man. Do you think he's going to think he owed, I mean, it's like Aaron
Eckert being in the very beginning of the movie. Maybe O'Neal LeBue to favor or something. I mean,
there were, I also Ellen Burstin and Frances Conroy. They're like, they were big stars. This is 2006,
right? Yeah, it was like right after six feet under wrapped up.
Yeah, there's no reason that all of these good people
should have been in the...
Right, this Conroy was in the...
I think that they all heard that,
they all heard that Nicholas Cage was in the movie,
but they didn't know yet that he was in all these bad movies.
So they're like, oh yeah.
Oh yeah, he's fun.
I mean, I'm in at the time Neil LeBute
was much more respected than he is now.
I mean, this is kind of what ruined him a little bit.
Well, Aaron Eckhart was in in the company of men.
That was one of the movies that helped him get bigger.
So that makes sense why he'd be in there.
But according to Wikipedia, Paul Rudd is the man pulled over
by Nicholas Cage in the first scene,
but I'm not sure I'm sure about that.
So I think, but here's the difference.
Those people were all being paid money to be in this whereas maybe james
franko did it for like college credit
uh...
i mean that's it's certainly possible
so the movie is over what the women
unpunished continue to lure men
to summer's i'll to sacrifice them for their honey harvest
and i just have to say it doesn't answer the question i really want answered
which is so how's the next harvest go? Like was Nicholas Cage a good enough sacrifice?
Like, what do you guys think? I mean, clearly not. They're already sending out more drones
to make more money. Well, they need one every year, right? Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean,
do they need, I guess they do need one every year. Well, why was, well, then why was last year so bad?
It's a good question.
They never really addressed that.
I thought this was to make up for the difference.
Yeah, I feel like it's a lie that they don't always have
to do a sacrifice.
Oh, I see.
I thought it was like they sacrifice just like a real doof.
Or they sacrifice like any dees in the year before.
And God was like, and the goddess was like, seriously?
This is what you're giving me.
But I mean, also the idea could be that it could highlight
that actually sacrificing somebody has no effect,
and there's no magic, and there's no God.
I mean, that's fair too.
That's a fair reading of the movie.
It's not actually not the case, yeah.
Do you think that the cause, you know,
like colony collapse with bees is a real problem?
Do you think it's because we're not sacrificing enough Nicholas cages?
Yeah.
I mean, to be fair, let's look at the facts.
We've sacrificed zero Nicholas cages so far up to this point and bees are disappearing
and dying off everywhere.
I think the only way to test the hypothesis is to sacrifice Nicholas cage and see what
happens.
But I mean, that would probably spell doom for this podcast.
That's right.
But we make it like trivaltemist or something like that.
You finally, you know, have his wish of, you know,
being put in that pyramid in New Orleans though.
So I mean, I don't know if that's a wish.
I mean, those are end of life plans.
It's not like I'll wish though.
Yeah, by like, it's not like you're like,
signing up for cremation or organ doning,
doesn't mean like donating, you're not like,
oh please, take them out of me right now.
This is what I want the most.
When I had a birthday recently,
and when I blew up the candle, I wasn't like,
oh, I just wish that someone takes my eyes
from out of my body right away.
Yeah, you'd only do that if you were on a really cool spaceship and you didn't
need those eyeballs anymore.
Oh, no, because I'm going to be living in hell after I go through that wormhole.
That movie, of course, Mars needs moms.
Let's put a bow on this one and say our final judgments, whether it's a good
bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or movie you kind of like,
let's let the guests go first.
How do you have to say?
These have got a very pin-sive look on their face.
I mean, it's somewhere in the middle.
The Zac Efron movie you guys had me watch was my favorite.
The Kirsten Dundes movie you made me watch was my least favorite.
I don't know which was the Zac Efron movie. It was the one where you were going to be. The DJ one? Yeah. Oh, these are me watch, it was my least favorite. So this is the second front movie.
It was the one where you were like a DJ.
The DJ one?
Yeah.
Oh, these are your friends.
No, no, no, these are your friends.
No, no, the one, because I was in where you're friends.
I think you were filling in for stewballs over here
and the one where he was like dating
and Michael B. Jordan was in it.
And Miles Cowell.
Oh, right.
The moment when, that feeling, that moment when.
Yeah, I love that one.
I love that. That movie's my favorite. That's the moment when that feeling that moment, that moment, that moment when I love that movie.
That's the one. That's the one where they take Viagra and then they they have to
pee with boners so they're laying across the toilet seats with their penises
going into the toilet. I can't believe I miss this.
Not how penis is working. I love that. But that was the other
person. Christen Dunst one. And I'm a big fan of Christian.
Down or not something like that
like there's a plan that are like next to each other. Oh yeah, there's like one
I don't know what good planet and the other ones. Yeah, I hated that. That was so boring. So this was like in the middle. Okay. Okay.
That that's been Hally and the hot seat. Yeah, I'm gonna say like I feel like when this movie came out, everyone heralded it as a new, good, bad classic.
And I don't think I can go with people on that one.
It's boring.
It's pretty boring.
It's only entertaining for the last 10 minutes of the movie.
Yeah.
I think this movie really benefited in that way
from the rise of YouTube around that time,
because you could see just the crazy clips,
one after another, and because there were a lot of
Supercuts people did of like all the crazy moments from Wickerman and they cut out yeah the parts where Nicholas Cage is literally
Just riding a bicycle around a beautiful
Island
Yet again by interrupting me you have scooped me that was what I was going to recommend that people do instead of
Watch the Wickerman all the way through is look up the YouTube supercut which is very funny. Yeah, if you don't watch the supercut you're
basically just watching Nicholas Cage run around the grounds of the Mohawk
mountain house. I mean the Mohawk mountain has to be fair is spooky you're
looking than anywhere in this island. Yeah, you figure any any place you turn
you're either gonna run into a ghost or, I don't know, some New York celebrity that's lumbing it.
I, I don't know, I, you know, I actually never seen this movie.
Oh wow.
And I enjoyed it quite a bit.
It is very dumb.
I would say it's a good bad movie because I it is, you do have to get through some of the
more boring parts, but it's not non-stop good bad the way some of the other movies that we've given that appellation to are.
There's nothing quite like sailing in the calm international waters on my ship, the
SS Biopic. Vast, it's actually pronounced biopic.
No, you dingus! It's biopic!
Who the hell says that? It's biopic.
It's the words that biography and picture.
If you...
Alright, that is enough.
Ahoy, I'm Dave Holmes.
I am the host of the rebooted podcast formerly known
as International Waters,
designed to resolve petty but persistent arguments like this.
How?
By pitting two teams of opinionated comedians against each other
with trivia and improv games, of course,
winner takes home the right to be right.
What podcast be this?
Go trouble waters!
Where we disagree to disagree!
Hi, I'm Jo Firestone.
I'm Manolo Moreno.
And we're the host of Dr. Game Show, which is a podcast where we play games submitted by listeners
regardless of quality or content with in-studio guests and collars from all over the world.
And you can win a custom magnet.
A custom magnet.
Subscribe now to make sure you get our next episode.
What's an example of a game Manolo?
Pokemon or medication. How do you play that? You. What's an example of a game in Olo. Pokemon or medication.
How do you play that?
You have to guess if something's a Pokemon name
or a medication.
Medication.
First time listener.
If you want to listen to episode highlights
and also know how to participate,
follow Dr. Game Show on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
We'd love to hear from you.
It's really fun.
For the whole family, we'll be every other Wednesday,
starting March 13th, and we're coming to max fun
Snorlax, Poggyman. Yes
Well, let's move on to our sponsors
Give them a little airtime the flop house has brought you in part
By Casper and it's a sleep brand that makes expertly designed products to help you get your best rest
One night at a time. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Are there other mattresses that help you rest
multiple nights at a time?
Oh, no, I don't.
When you stack a bunch of mattresses on top of each other,
and there's no pee at all underneath them.
Oh, I was gonna set a problem with those products.
Is there's a pee?
That's why you gotta get a Casper.
Oh, okay, I guess I get, well, you know.
I heard different things. I mean, the well, you know, I heard different things.
I mean the internet, you know, there's differing information out there.
You get a one star, you get a five star, you never know.
Yeah, but you don't want to have to worry about whether or not there's a p.
Why don't you get a Casper mattress instead?
Yeah, there's only a single p in Casper.
They're having Casper.
You know where the p is, right in the middle of the word.
The original Casper mattress combines a multiple supportive memory foams for a quality sleep
surface with the right amounts of both sink and bounce.
Affordable prices, because Casper cuts out the middle man and sells directly to you.
Get out of here, middle man.
You can be sure of your purchase with Casper's 100 Night Risk Free
Sleep on it, trial, get $100
Toward Select Matresses by visiting Casper.com
Slash Flop House
And using Flop House at checkout.
That's Casper.com slash Flop House and using Flop House at checkout.
Terms and conditions apply.
This is mattress really comfortable. I have to get a new mattress.
Yeah, you can use that code too, Hal.
I have a cast from mattress. I like it quite a bit actually.
Is it green?
Is it green?
Yeah.
Why is that your question?
Like not the color.
Oh, that actually makes more sense.
For a second I have the color. The one just dipped in that actually makes more sense. For a second, I have the color.
The one just dipped in an Easter egg die.
It'll be fine.
I thought it was because she was like,
how am I going to hide a pee under that thing
if it's not green?
All right, I'll stop.
Go.
Oh, is it green?
And okay, I got you.
Because some are.
Oh, that is.
I believe I said you both jump Otrons to read.
Is when you get up and ready to go.
I'm gonna check my email.
Now you sent me to Dan, are they both for me?
Wait, did I send you to?
I didn't want it all.
Oh, okay, you sent them both to me, I think, a business and a personal.
All of you.
Uh, I'm happy to both.
So you want to do the other one when Dan finds it?
Yeah, I'll hand stir it this other.
Okay, so am I doing the business one or the personal one?
You get to choose.
That's the great thing about this jumbo trade situation.
Okay, I'll do the personal one.
Okay, so this is a message for Cody and the messages from Janna.
And the message is Baby Crabbs, how happy I am to be celebrating two years in Christmas
with you.
Thank you for everything you do for me, not the least of which is introducing me to the
other boys, the original peaches.
I don't know how I would sleep without them in my year every night, finding clues and talking to Stu.
I love you, that's love with three capital L's, you my derling. Love Mr. Baby.
He listens to you every night to go to sleep.
Uh-huh. Dan does that too. Well not myself, I don't listen to myself to go to sleep.
Yeah, you too. Dan, not myself. I don't listen myself to go to sleep. Yeah, you too.
Dan listens to a flop house.
But then you hear our words, right?
Because like having my hands comforting me.
Dan painstakingly removes his voice from every episode
and then listens to it as he sleeps.
And I it's like Garfield without Garfield.
I got a jujujumbo tron.
ABC movies is the world's only movie podcast. Every week, film geek, Caleb
Shively and writer Chris Schaffin talk both smartly and
dumbly about one great new movie currently in theaters and one older movie
that's related to it in some way. Whether it's by the same director or just had a big influence on it.
Recent episodes include the Irishmen and on the waterfront, Parasite and the host,
and Mid-Summer and Force Measure. That's ABC movies, actually best choice movies. So search for ABC movies on Apple podcasts or Spotify.
And I apologize if I messed up any names there.
So we're just broadcasting falsehoods now.
This is.
You gotta have a guess.
Most of what are shared with anyone.
You gotta have a guess.
It's a big claim to say the world's only movie podcast.
It's a big enough claim that you might want to check it out.
Mm-hmm.
Check it out to disprove it.
Go ahead.
The world's only movie podcast.
Let's move on to letters from listeners.
So let's open up that mailbag.
Oh, wow, that mailbag's pretty dirty and dusty after 300 episodes.
Yeah, let's blow some dust off of that mailbag.
Do you hear the pipes, a pipe and a fiddle in the background?
Perhaps some light strumming?
Oh, open-on mailbag, I'll tell you a tale.
Let's tale of 300 episodes.
Episodes here, episodes here, 300 episodes strong. The tail begins with a man
called Dan, doing his best, doing what he can, but what he could, and what he should,
were not the same thing you will see. He called his friend Stuart. Stuart, nothing rhymes with that. Stuart was his name, and Stuart was his game for. Stuart
was very much all about games. Dan had, you know, three names, Dan Kirk, and then McCoy.
Those are the three names for Dan. And they had another guy who I will not mention at this
point in his story, for there was some kind of thing that happened there
the records are spotty nobody knows nobody cares because there was a change in the offing
and that change his name was Elliott Elliott descended from on high descended perhaps from
a mountain or a cloud descended and he was very squeaky and loud. Elliot decided to join the gang, and so we had three adventurers we,
Dan and Stewart and the guy whose names are to thee,
and they became the flop house guys, the flop house guys.
What a surprise, who should know when they were born.
That this day upon this mourn, that 300 episodes would have flown by.
300 episodes with these three guys guys 300 episodes with the flop house
That is the tail of the flop house 300 more perhaps we'll see we're not making promises you or me
300 episodes is quite a lot
300 episodes. Oh, it's so hot because I live in Los Angeles now where the temperature never gets quite below
50
All right, well so stew when is now where the temperature never gets quite below 50.
All right. Well, so Stu went on a beer and wins Ellie going to sing his episode 300 song. And that's a very good question. Here comes the second chapter of the epic
story of the clubhouse fast forward 300 years. You got to get a beer and how you
went and keed. So I'm the only one here listening to all this shit in the year
23 19 the oldest year we've ever seen when the seas have dried and the air is on fire and yet the
Flophouse guys did not expire
Curst as they were to continue this show
Curst as they were to continue as winds blow as tornadoes and and hurricanes, floods and famine and fire, and other disasters hit the earth. The flopphouse continues. They hunkered down in a bunker.
With canned foods and canned movies, they decided that they should go until the earth was destroyed.
The sun went supernova, but even then a little of the flopphouse survived. And so, to you,
who are listening now, far off millions of years in the future,
reach out your hands and grasp a moat of dust you must for it is all that's left of the
flop house. So that's the end of the second part of the song. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
there's no third part. Okay. How is the kitchen getting water but she can hear from from there?
Use the water in the fridge. There's a picture. No, no, this is much better than my song. Thanks guys
In yeah, no the waters in the picture in the refrigerator in Dan's apartment, which is what's the address?
On two three fake straight America the US
is that the town
one two three four five so
this first letter is from
Benedict last name
Comberbatch
and Benedict writes
I'm reading very slowly so
I like him to get back with her glasses of water
these glasses are so big, how he says
he's just taking so much time to fill it with water
yeah Benedict writes
Dear Peaches on a recent podcast, you mentioned 16 candles and alluded
to its problematic nature.
That is one of the many films that I loved when I first saw them as a kid but have not
aged well due to them having moments, characters or entire premises that were racist, slash
sexist, slash homophobic,
or just generally culturally insensitive.
I'd add movies such as Revenge of the Nerds,
Breakfast at Tiffany's, Mr. Mom,
and Anymore Views Delirious to that list.
And I'm not even gonna go into movies
from the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
My question to you three is this,
can you think of any films from the 80s or earlier
that are unexpectedly progressive?
Or is everything made before Clinton kind of a racist and sexist and homophobic?
As opposed to Clinton, who of course was not sexist or homophobic at all.
Yeah, that's the one.
Come on, man.
Benedict Glass, I think he was just using it as a marker of time.
I know, I know.
It just seemed ironic to me that the man who signed the defensive
Mara Jack and was also like a like a sexual predator in a way like anyway. Don't ask. I know that's it.
Yeah, that's true. The yeah, so I mean, obviously I think it's a little bit of shorthand to
write off all movies of that time period as having those
traits. But I mean, it's about the crying game. I actually never saw that. The subject
matter.
That's been years. I have no idea how it would hold up. I mean, the crying game is also from
1992. So I guess it's technically before Clinton's presidency but what about this movie?
Haven't seen
Okay, so I'll jump in
Obviously, I think nine to five probably holds up I think
Dirty dancing is surprisingly progressive in some ways
Particularly with the subplot about the young
woman getting an abortion.
I was going to mention there's a movie from 1962 called Advising Consent, which is about
the confirmation process for a cabinet officer, Secretary of State, I think.
And there's a character in it who's a senator, I believe, who is blackmailed
because he is secretly gay, and he is having a gay relationship. But the way that the relationship
is handled is not in a way that is judgmental or sinister. And it's, I think the first
time in an American movie that you see a gay bar, and the gay bar is presented as a bar
that men go to. There's nothing weird about it. There's nothing out of the ordinary or strange or gross or scary about it.
And it's so it's like the character is taken advantage of by people because he has this
secret.
But the movie seems to have the point of view of like it would be better if he just didn't
have to have this secret.
Like he is not judged for being gay.
And the gay bar is not a scary place to go.
And I remember watching it being like, oh I'm surprised.
This is like a like a surprisingly progressive view
of what it is like to be gay at a time
when it was still mostly unspeakable in America.
Dan, are you preparing your defense
of animal house right now?
I am.
He's like, guys, if it takes place in the future
and all the women are robots, then it's okay.
I wonder what about, I mean,
what about something I mean,
what about something like Rocky or a picture show?
Would that be like, I don't know.
Like, it feels like it's transgressive,
but I don't necessarily think it's being judgmental,
but I could be coming from a place of privilege
and have no idea what I'm fucking talking about.
No, I think Rocky, Harp Picture Show is,
I mean, I haven't seen it in years,
but like, when you're watching it, it feels like it's a movie made by outsiders, four outsiders.
The things that are kind of like tabooish or shocking in it, the characters are so delighting
in it and are not.
And the fact that every single character in it is kind of sexually malleable, but the
reason that they end badly is because the Transylvanians are like,
hey, Frank and Furter, like you're spending so much time enjoying yourself, like we're
supposed to be invading this planet, like it's not related to their choices of bedpartners
or anything like that, you know.
I want to say, I'm having a hard time coming up with specific examples, but I do feel like
before the haze code came into effect, like a lot of early Hollywood movies
treated
sexuality and kind of like the idea that like both women and men
might have sexual desires and like
You know find pleasure in that with a little more sophistication than later on when sort of champions of quote morality came in and tried to clean up
the depictions of such things like I don't know I can't think of a good example
but I feel like I watched some early movies and I'm surprised by how like
equitable the male-female relationships feel and how like satisfying the romantic relationship
is, I don't know, how it kind of depends movie to movie, but there's certainly more room
in there for that.
Yeah, how do you think?
I don't know.
Okay.
But you had their movies like, is it babyface?
The one where Barbara Stanwick is sleeping her way
to success through the people at this company
and the movie is like, it feels like she is
and she's punished for it,
but by losing a man that she loves,
but it feels like the movie is like,
yeah, this is what she's been forced,
that this is the only way she has to get out of her situation.
Like the movie is like, yeah,
I guess we have to punish her at the end,
but we're not, our heart's not really in it, you know, and that's one of those pre-code
movies that people point to a lot.
Um, okay, uh, you know, I just picked out two this time, the last.
You got another, another hard question for the second answer.
The second answer.
What I like, Dan, what I like about it is that we had, that you had this question much
longer than any of us did.
Uh, but you seem to think that I look at the questions
before I send them to you in the morning.
Like, I decide what looks like an interesting thing,
but we have this big backlog of questions
that I'm just filing through, and I see them,
maybe a minute before you see them.
So it's not.
Okay.
This one is from Amelast name,
or sorry, Amel rest of name withheld.
Moriarty.
Wow.
Obviously, if he's going to just give an initial.
Well, let's look the letter.
I have a series of clues for you.
Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.
Aye, the Napoleon of crime.
Uh, Am writes, uh, hello, Peach people.
It's a McCavity.
It's a trope and horror movies to have a character. Usually the villain
be killed only to dramatically open his or her eyes later to reveal the threat is not over
slash an impending sequel. My question to you is, in what non horror movie would this trope
be most interesting and or misplaced
What if at the end of up the old man's wife opened her eyes revealing that she was alive the whole time
Certainly yours M rest of name with hell. I think at the end of
At the end of citizen Kane Kane
Leap up and be like of course my sled and rush in and and pulling out of the fire.
Like Charlie's grandpa.
Yeah. Did you guys ever see dying young with Julia?
A robber and Campbell's Campbell's got I'm aware of it. I've been seeing it.
Maybe that one. Yeah.
I would say I feel like it would I don't I don't know how but like
Conan the barbarian after Conan hacks off Tholstadoum's head and tosses it down the steps
like if his eyes opened up and he was like that would be pretty cool. Yeah. Or obviously
if at the end of grave of the fireflies, if the little girl was like, I'm not dead,
that would probably undercut the movie.
What about the six cents?
The twisted, he was alive the whole time.
And they're trying to guess like the kid
so they can get his jewels or something. That would be so funny.
I'm counting one this one.
I don't know, but Elliot, what do you got?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Hey, let's do it. Yeah, the end of butch Cassie and sony it's good. Yeah, it was out of the
freeze and they jumped out the back window. Yeah. The end of old Yeller.
Bambi's mom shows up. It's like it's time to get revenge. Yeah, yeah, the end of old
yellow old yellow standing in the doorway with a gun.
Maybe it's me. Rabies you.
Hydrophobic.
Anyway, so this is the 300th episode as we said. And so in lieu of recommendations, we had decided to take a little trip down memory lane,
talk about what the podcast has meant for us, how things have changed.
I don't know, we didn't really, we kind of vaguely, vaguely thought of this notion and then
didn't really plan much out.
So who knows what the segment's gonna be but
Yes, so I expected Dan to have something prepared
I mean this is kind of the time the podcast where I would like to recommend a little movie
It's about a young man who should be inheriting a castle, but instead
His brother is inheriting that castle now this young man is should be inheriting a castle, but instead his brother is inheriting that castle.
Now, this young man is chained into the abacement cell and his mother dies. Okay, follow me here.
Now, he doesn't know what to do. He breaks himself out. He chooses off his thumb. He probably
rips off his own ding dong the movie is called castle freak. I
Appreciate the the bit that you're doing
Contradicts directly what I introduced might be a problem. I'm just if we're gonna give each other notes. No, I know that's fair
Yeah, I mean, I guess we've been we've been doing the show a long time
Did you guys did you guys think when you started Because again, I wasn't there at the very beginning.
How long did you think it would last when you first started doing it?
I think it's too or too soon to last until I lost interest.
Yeah, probably.
I mean, I remember Dan suggesting it and me having,
I mean, this was 2007.
So when he's like, do you want to do a podcast?
I was like, what's a podcast?
It's a year after the Wickerman's been made.
I don't know how we would do it.
The, yeah, this is a, a P W M timeline.
The, and I think the first couple episodes we recorded in my bed,
like my bedroom in my apartment.
Yeah, with a single microphone, a USB microphone
plugging directly into my computer that I think I had also
made like a kind of homemade shock mount where I just
strapped a few rubber bands across like a Tupperware dish
and put the stick the microphone of that.
So.
That kind of ingenuity would become a hallmark
of Dan's production.
Yeah, years later, when Marty Scorsese
makes a movie about the early days
of the flop house.
I mean, I don't know how many years later
it's going to be, because Marty's kind of getting up there
in years, but.
No, no, no, they'll just use
D-Aging technology on there in years, but. No, no, no, they'll just use de-aging technology on it.
Oh, okay.
And then for a long time with the flop house,
it was not a particularly formal or even scheduled thing, right?
Yeah, we, or in the early years, we,
I don't, like I think it was you, Elliott,
who introduced the idea of like, hey guys,
we can come up with a schedule ahead
of time, and that will help us stay on schedule.
But that was like four or five years in.
Yeah, we should have hit 300 a lot earlier, because otherwise it was like, oh, we haven't
done an episode in a little while.
Are you guys free tonight?
Yeah, I guess so, okay.
Yeah, and, well, I mean, it wasn't quite to that level, but it was like, I'd be like,
uh, hey, in a couple of days, are you okay?
And like, if someone wasn't able to be there,
I'd be like, okay, we're just gonna get a guest host in.
And, and so, a lot of that early stuff
was very uneven and erratic.
That was why Halley had to watch a movie with Kirsten Dunst
and two cities
Above each other garbage
Yeah, I don't even remember that movie. I like I remember that exists I don't remember anything about it. Halley. What do you remember about what Halley? You've been on how many episodes of the show probably at least
three
I'm at least one live show, right? Remember those three
Did you do that you did a 50 shades of gray?
Yeah, and I've done the live show.
Uh-huh.
That was the 50 shades of gray one, wasn't it?
Oh, right.
A little live show.
Yeah.
Oh, I was the zookeeper.
I did the zookeeper.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, I'm the right one too.
Yeah.
I think that was your frequent sub.
Or in your early years.
Did you feel a lot of pressure having to be my substitute?
Well, I know, it's a matter of listen to the podcast.
Oh, I don't, I don't technically blame you.
No, no, yeah, I did.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So, the, I looked it up.
There are 14 episodes tagged with Halley's name on the website,
although there may be even more episodes,
because I don't think I figured out how to use tags
until later on in our process.
I mean, but we also talked about Halley a lot, right?
Because Halley is one of those performers
where when she's not around,
you're just like, what's Halley doing?
Where's Halley doing this?
What's going on with Halley?
Changing diapers.
And so how has your life changed since you started with the flop house? Do you think you'd be a mother now if you hadn't been a flop house guest?
No, no.
My life has changed.
You hadn't even slept with your husband.
I hadn't slept with anybody before the...
Oh wow.
But then I saw a movie with sex on this podcast. I'm like, what's
that? I'll try anything once. And that's when I got pregnant at one time. Elliot didn't
have children at the start of this podcast. How is the podcast informed your parenting?
Well, I think hanging out with you guys regularly has really changed, it really prepared me
for having two young sons who I just have to like keep around.
We're older and both older than you, but.
Yeah, but I mean, when it comes to certain types of emotional things, I don't know.
But it's weird for me to think back, especially like our lives have changed in many ways
since we started doing this together and that like
We're just at like super different places and it's nice that this has provided such a such a core
For us to keep our lives revolving around. Yeah, all those years. Yeah, I started this podcast because I was a
struggling
Want to be comedy person and now I've grown fat and complacent
Not yeah, now that you've made it you're like
Who cares?
Let's go away by doing a terrible 300th episode
Well, I know that doing this has been a very meaningful thing to me and it's always
Usually rewarding when people are like, oh, I love your podcast and I'm like, you listen to that and I'm like,
you know, we've been doing this for so long.
And I guess that's why I guess we gotta drop that big
bombshell that this is the last episode.
Shut up.
It's the last episode, Dan.
You're gonna really like, there are people out there
whose hearts just plummeted.
What am I gonna do with my Sundays now?
No, why?
I enjoy them, I suppose.
Well, there is part of me that's like, oh, someday when we're not, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, But guys, how long do you think you're gonna do it for? Should we just send them a hour or what? I do this.
I do like the idea that you wanna watch a screener of Booksmart.
When I know you always watch the Flap House movies,
while like, on an iPad, while you're doing the dishes.
Yeah, I don't think it actually interferes
with your schedule all that much to watch movies.
No, but the dish washing time is when I get to watch movies.
Okay.
So like, I do put it like, I could be watching, okay, so I wouldn't be watching that screener book smart, but I dish washing time is when I get to watch movies. So like I do put it like I could be what okay,
so I wouldn't be watching that screen or book smart,
but I could be watching something
on like the Turner Classic movies app, you know.
Is that why when you guys have dinner,
you're like everything gets a fucking ramicking,
like you're putting everything in your dishes,
like you're even putting ketchup in a lower ramicking
and shit.
Yeah.
There is far to me that when the,
when the dish, when the sink is filling up with dishes,
I'm like more movie time like, okay,'s fine ever since I started a really concentrating on me son plus
Been watching a lot more movies Daniel's like yeah, I don't think we need a different a different fork for each course
I'm like no, no, it's the proper way to do it. Yeah, but and there's
On plus so he can think about me's on song
So he can think about me's on song. Yeah, yeah.
And they're nights when Danny I was like, I'll do the dishes for you.
And I'm like, no, no, it's fine.
And I'm like slapping plates out of her hands.
Like, I'll take care of that.
But yeah, no guys, look, I know we talked about doing some big crazy things for this 300th episode.
And then we were like, you know what?
That's a lot of work.
Let's keep it in the family.
But I think, you know, I enjoy doing this with you guys all the time and I hope we get to do it for
many more and many more years to come and I know we can because it's not like anyone,
it's not like anyone can tell us. Yeah, no one stops us. I feel like the next
minute, I feel like Lithga wasn't coming in being like, no podcasting in this town.
I feel like the next time we have Halley on,
I think you should just get to pick the movie.
Yeah, Halley.
I've no idea why we keep making you watch
in these dogs and movies.
Yeah, I'd love that.
Halley, what movie would you have us watch?
I don't know.
Don't put me on the spot here.
I mean, maybe City of Angels, you've already mentioned it.
Oh yeah, that's good movie.
Too good, too've already mentioned it. Oh, yeah, that's a good one, maybe.
Too good, too beautiful for this world. Yeah, yeah.
We would pull up the Skype channel with Elliot
and his eyeballs had been ripped out
because he had seen something too beautiful
and he didn't want all the gaze upon anything else.
Yeah, yeah, event horizon again.
So, guys, you know who I want to thank for doing this.
I want to thank Dan, you for coming up with this idea. Halley, you for event horizon again. So guys, I want to you know who I want to thank for doing this I want to thank Dan you for coming up with this idea. How are you for being a guest Stuart?
You for making this show possible and great and for letting me be your coach on it
And I want to thank the listeners for sticking with us all this time. How about that? Huh?
Mm-hmm sounds great
Because without them we just be howling into the void just which is what I assume we were doing the first couple of years.
Oh, it probably were.
I assume Dan was just like keeping them in his vault.
Like, for instance, keeping all his videos in a vault.
Yeah, and my urine bottles.
So you're like, I'll soak the podcast in this urine to preserve it.
It's like, that's not really how files work, Dan.
No.
But that's, I do remember, Dan, at the time you were like,
I'm gonna keep them in my vault,
and then I'll release them every 10 years
so a new generation of flop listeners will have them.
And I'm like, but you haven't released them yet
the first time, there's no demand for it.
And he was like, it works for Disney, it works for me.
And then you introduced Dan Plus,
which was your streaming channel, right?
With the Dandelorian, that was the show you made
that I love to stand the lion.
And Dan in real life.
The only movie that you can see on that.
Some kind of a pancake based movie.
Now I just realized when we first started doing the show,
could you imagine like the fact that you have now written for mystery science theater 3000 is crazy.
Yeah.
No, really makes makes makes this show obsolete because I achieved my other
my other bad movie dream.
But the, uh, yeah, it's that if you do, if you put out into the universe,
the things that you want to do often, the universe will be like, all right,
I'll allow it this time.
You know, it'll be a nice judge as opposed to the hanging judge that the universe
often is.
Do you think the show helped you get that kick?
Do you think it was an eight?
Yeah, I think so.
I think it helped.
I think having been the head writer of the daily show probably helped quite a bit too.
I don't think they look at that.
I think that's my major thing.
It's just give me a little.
But the first time I met Joel, we met up and he goes, is that, are you Ellie Caelin
from the flop house?
And so like he had done his research on me.
I think it helped that I was like, I mean,
he heard the flop house I'm sure because I wrote to him
and then he looked me up.
But I think it helped to establish my bad movie,
Bonafide is my BMBFs.
So I think it did help.
Well guys, that was nice little.
I mean, I'll say the, I feel very lucky.
The flop house has opened a lot of doors for me.
Yeah.
And someday they will for you to dance.
I've done things that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise.
Uh, I mean, certainly, like, if anyone contacts me to do anything, it is rarely because
I am a writer for a popular television program.
It's because I am front and center
on this dumb little show we do, so I appreciate it.
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly given me a little bit of the,
like it's, it's certainly helped me professionally.
I mean, even though I don't work in the comedy field or anything,
but the, you know, giving me the confidence
to like open up a small business
and giving me a place to meet with people who are listeners
and all that stuff.
I don't know.
When we first started doing this show, I was working for a company
and there was a point early on where I got laid off
and it was kind of soul crushing.
And yeah, it's nice that I'm not laid off anymore.
And now I work for myself. Yeah, you'd have to fire'm not laid off anymore. I'm not I work for myself
Yeah, you'd have to fire yourself at this point, right? Mm-hmm, but I know what I've done
Okay, yeah, that was that was nice guys. Thanks for thanks for indulging us listeners with talking about ourselves and Hallie also for sitting through it. Thanks for including me in this very special episode guys. I feel honored
Yeah, and I, you know, we should, I, I don't think
as anyone else we would want to have.
No, not at all.
And Halle, would you promise to come back
for our 600th episode?
Should we all be alive still by that point?
Oh my God, yeah.
Then my kid'll be like, oh, did I want
to have to press feed him anymore?
Well, let's have, let's have.
Well, you don't have to.
You'll be one of those moms who's like,
no, I just want to keep that connection from breastfeeding even though he's 13 years old.
My name is Immune System. Come in. Let's have her back before that. I feel bad. I did hold
off for a while because I'm like, oh, how is executive producing this show? And then
she was pregnant. She doesn't have time for our stupidity, but now hopefully she has a little more time for stupidity.
I feel like this is the second time
one of our friends here like,
I don't know if they're gonna have time to be on a podcast.
They just had a kid and I'm like,
I'm pretty sure when you have a kid,
you're like, can I have two hours away for a second?
Can I have an excuse to leave my house, please?
It's true.
All right, well, we should say all our usual jazz.
Thanks. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba Look, that's what happened. You saw the movie. If you move out to LA, just get jazz. Why can't I just get jazz?
I'm gonna get in on the restaurant.
Elliot invented jazz, but you moved out there.
Thank you to Maximum Fun, our network.
Go over to MaximumFun.org.
So listen to a bunch of other great shows.
Thank you to the donors who help keep us going
through Maximum Fun without your support.
As much as we love the show. We probably couldn't do it.
I mean, I don't know about, yeah.
We could do it, but we probably would not be able
to make the time in our busy lives if we weren't paid.
And please tweet about us, social media of your choice
about us, leave us a review on iTunes, a good review.
Yeah, be gentle on this one, guys.
And I think that's about it unless anyone has anything to say. How you got anything to plug?
No.
Motherhood?
No.
She refuses.
All right, well, if that's the case, thanks for listening to us for low these many years.
For the flop-ass, I've been Dan McCoy.
I've been Stuart Wellington.
I'm Elliot Kaylen.
And I'm Halle Hagland.
See ya next time.
Byeee! Dan, at this point, you know that our relationship is strictly business.
Uh-huh.
Very hurt.
We used to be strictly ballroom, and then Dan broke his ankle.
Dan, he tours ACL, and he could dance the way he used to.
Uh, dance like an angel I used to.
Okay. I loved that movie. He tours ACL and he could dance the way he is still.
I love that movie.